THE FAMILY COURT PROJECT HAS COME TO A CLOSE.
Effective 6/1/08, Family Court Chronicles has become inactive (announcement), and
no new information will be added. The page below is retained for
archive purposes, but it could be out of date. Upon request,
the webmaster will
continue to correct significant errors and will consider
removing information that is destructively obsolete.
(Email: FamilyCourtGuy (at) gmail.com) See
Glenn Campbell's home page for his still-active websites.

This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #54, 12/27/2006

Let's Dis' Christmas

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

Now that Christmas is over, I can finally speak my mind on
the subject. It is a hideous, reprehensible holiday that
damages children and serves only the needs of our
capitalist economy.

I have no objection to a holiday where people get together
with family and friends. This is good, especially when
people are so over-programmed that they might not do it
otherwise. It is the gift-giving tradition that has become
disgusting—a monster out of control.

I have nothing against gift giving, but its meaningfulness
lies in its spontaneity and its free-will nature. The best
gift is something that is unexpected and perfectly
tailored to the person you are giving to. It is the
physical equivalent of sharing a new idea or experience with
them. A gift is a means of personal communication.

There is nothing discretionary about gift-giving at
Christmas. Society forces you to do it. The result is
gifts without joy or communication.

Children look forward to Christmas, but not with the kind
of innocent, wide-eyed wonder we associate with it. Children
approach Christmas with greed, pure and simple. "What am I
going to get?" Parents, in turn, are forced into an endless
arms race where they have to top whatever they did last year
and keep up with the next-door neighbors.

A "successful" Christmas is one where no one is complaining
too badly at the end of it. There is no real joy except at
the moment a gift is unwrapped. The toy is used once then
thrown into the child's overburdened room, where
it remains untouched until eventually disposed of.

The power structure of Christmas is very disturbing. Parents
give and children receive. Children don't have to do
anything to receive their gift; it just comes to them
because of their god-like specialness. The bigger the gift,
the more it reinforces the child's position as a spoiled
brat who deserves special attention just for existing.
The more extravagant the Christmas, the more you are pushing
the child toward eventual ruin in adulthood, where he will
expect this coddled treatment to continue.

And don't get me started on that Santa Claus dude. I just
don't understand: How does it benefit children to teach
them this fantasy?

Parents are motivated not by the "joy of giving" but by
guilt and a desperate desire to be adored. An expensive gift
is a cheap shot to adoration. It is supposed to make up for
all the time and attention not spent on the child.

Christmas is a drug-fix for defective families. It doesn't
raise good children. It doesn't built character. It is
this massive year-end distraction from the real business of
child-rearing, which is to teach self-sufficiency and
responsibility.

The secret, insidious purpose of Christmas is to breed
consumers. It teaches children that the purpose of life is
to acquire things.

Christmas is a holiday of impossible dreams and inevitable
disappointment, which haunt the child into adulthood.
Because Christmas is always overhyped and underfulfilled, it
creates in later life the ingrained psychology of "giving
gifts to oneself." Primed by Christmases of the
past—disappointing or excessive—adults can spend
their whole lives giving themselves presents—shiny,
useless, expensive things they think they deserve.
Christmas helps create a perpetual sense of entitlement. "I
deserve this frivolous thing, because I have been good."

You hear this explicitly in adult advertizing: "After all
you have done throughout the year, don't you deserve a
Lexus?" Christmas has evolved into a capitalist tool to
generate lifelong consumer demand. The whole idea of "I
deserve it because I've been good" comes from the Christmas
mythology.

As I see it, you never "deserve" to waste resources, even if
you earned them. If you have enough extra money to buy a
Lexus, then you should be using it for some service to
humanity. That is supposed to be the true Christian ethos of
Christmas: giving, not receiving.

Christmas, quite simply, is a money machine, created by
merchants for merchants. It isn't a "children's holiday." It
is a holiday for the exploitation of children. You dangle
some useless bauble in front of them and seduce them into
begging their parents for it. It is just another systematic
method of extracting money from people who have it.

If you are a parent, the pressure of Christmas is hard to
resist. Are you going to spoil your children by giving them
useless gifts they didn't work for, or are you going to
traumatize them by denying them Christmas altogether?

I suggest taking them away, preferably out of the country.
Instead of holding your family vacation in the summer, you
could have it in the winter, just happening to coincide with
Dec. 25. You could do something with your kids
rather than giving them something. This will probably be
much more meaningful in the long run.

—G.C.

Links

Reader Comments

“Amen”
—Joe in NY 12/27/06 (rating=3)

“Wholeheartedly believe in this philosphy!!!!! This is what I do with my two boys, ages 14 and 9, and have been doing with them for the past 5 years during the Christmas holidays. Believe me the first year is rough, but my children have acquired so much more in their travels then any tangible gift that I could have ever given them. Ulysses once said that, "Travel is an inexhaustible source of wisdom. We not only learn about new places, but also about ourselves, different customs and meeting new challenges." Great Article!!!”
—Georgina Stuart 12/28/06 (rating=5)

“It's a good perspective and its leaning toward not relying on materialism, and teaching the next generation of the temporary element of materialism which the Bible clearly states in Mathew 6:19.”
—Sylvie Yeghiaian, Canada 10/24/07 (rating=3)